panopticon

Art by Hannah Walker (2018 archive)

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She sees a rabbit in the grass, and 

it’s a little shaking thing,

half-covered by clover and impossibly still.

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Its ears, twin antennas, are frozen where they are

as—and because—she watches it,

but she won’t look away until she knows it’s alright.

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The ears twitch again, its spine shakes.

Eyes are drilling into its back.

The rabbit can neither move nor vanish.

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She isn’t to blame.

She hasn’t learned yet 

that closing her eyes does not make her disappear

the moment the world beyond her eyelids is gone,

even though that is how it should go.

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There is still a fistful of grass filled by the there of the rabbit,

even when it makes itself as still as possible,

so that she can see it,

so that the rabbit cannot move.

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She is

the ten sprawled fingerprints with a nose print in between

that smudged the windowpane,

marks that will be there awhile afterwards.

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She hasn't seen one-way glass yet,

mirror that is window.

If she saw it she wouldn’t think on it long,

besides as some anticlimactic magic trick.

Don’t tell her why they put the tower in the center.

She knows of being seen,

not being watched.

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Maybe the rabbit knows.

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Maybe the rabbit knows she will not hurt it. Maybe the rabbit knows she will not hurt it

and is still scared.

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